By Emilie. It’s a bustling, cultural city that’s also handily placed next to the beautiful Lake Como. Here are our top tips to make the most of your experience…

1) Milan is the home of The Last Supper. If you want to see it you either have to be really organised (tickets sell out months in advance) or be willing to part with a pretty hefty amount of cash to do one of those lame bus tours, which also happens to includes a ticket. As someone who did the latter, I’d recommend being organised.

It is rather breathtaking though, even if you’re not an art lover.

2) The first ever Prada shop is in Milan and it’s pretty cool. We didn’t go in, but we did loiter around outside and peer through the window in a Pretty Woman not-sure-if-we’re-allowed-to-go-in kind of way.

3) You’re gonna have to queue for everything. The Duomo, the Last Supper, the lift at your hotel. Get used to it, and pack a dose of patience to get your through.

4) The organised tours are not worth it. The tour to Lake Como that required getting up at an ungodly hour and costed nearly a hundred euros was all booked up, so we just took a train and went there ourselves. Much better.

5) Lake Como is as beautiful as it looks in those Nespresso adverts. We took a (very cheap) boat out onto the lake and enjoyed a peaceful half hour of not understanding a word the tour guide said. Something about George Clooney.

Also, it comes with its own hashtag these days [see below].

6) The metro is super handy. Quick, efficient and dirt cheap, it sure beats walking for miles in the heat.

7) A hotel with a pool and spa facilities is the perfect antidote to hours traipsing around the streets of Milan. Just don’t spend too much time looking at your pasta food baby.

8) Ah yes, the food. How did we get to point number eight without mentioning the food? The pasta, the wine, the tiramisu… it all lived up to the hype. We also stumbled upon a lovely waiter who specialised in free shots of Limoncello.

9) There are canals. You might even think you’re in Amsterdam for a moment.

10) Selfie sticks are actually charmingly functional. Bear with us here. After two days of double chins and weird up-the-nostril shots trying to cram four people into one photo, I caved and got a selfie stick. It was legit one of the best decisions I made.

1) Pippa’s wedding. Despite some newspapers’ three-week build-up to the second biggest royal wedding we really didn’t care all that much. Our reaction went pretty much like this: dress – mehfinelovely. Good arms though. Really good arms. We really should work out more. Oh look, that dude from Made In Chelsea is there.

2) Three Girls. Based on the Rochdale sexual abuse scandal, this was harrowing TV at its very best. If you haven’t seen it yet, get it on iPlayer right now.

3) Sketch in Mayfair, London. We’re probably really late to the party here (standard) but wow – this place is like something out of Alice In Wonderland. With insanely cool décor and such things as a pink room and rabbit-shaped hedgerow, it’s the place to go for cocktails, afternoon tea, or something a little more substantial. Just make sure you hang around for long enough to try the egg-shaped toilets.

4) Pixie crops. They’re quite the thing right now, with Katy Perry, Kristen Stewart and Cara Delevingne all going for the chop recently. But our personal favourite belongs to Michelle Williams. One day we will be brave enough to ask our hairdresser for this.

5) Talking of Katy Perry, we must mention Swish Swish, her new single. Predictably, it’s rumoured to throw shade at arch nemesis Taylor Swift. Unpredictably for us, we’re pretty bored of it all now. We have a funny feeling they’re actually best pals and are delighted by all the publicity. Enough now please?

Trust me, it’s possible. Just yesterday, I tirelessly scrolled through 1,456 dress results only to be left bereft with nothing but a wasted lunch hour to show for it. Here are some alternatives to bookmark under ‘emergency backup’ immediately…

Stradivarius sits under the Indetix umbrella, like Zara — always a good sign. I particularly rate their shoes and bags, but they also do a good line in basics like skinny trousers. Just don’t get upset when you discover a size 12 is called an xxxxxxxxl or something equally ridiculous.

Ok, so P&B is also under Indetix. I’d say their vibe is a bit more casual ­­— so not my first-stop for night-out attire, but great for outwear and holiday bits. Comparable with H&M price-wise, so good for pre-payday pick-me-ups.

I think I’ve just found the trench I’ve been searching for since birth*. It’s the perfect shade of non-yellowy beige. The lapels aren’t too big. The sleeves are tapered. Bonus points for the styling here as it’s made me want the whole outfit.

1) We’re starting this week on sexist headlines about women. ‘Braless XX flaunts her cleavage’, ‘Pregnant XX shows off her bump’ and the one we’re astounded actually made it to print, ‘Man’s life ruined by sexual assault.’ A sexual assault HE committed. No, no, and NO.

2) Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, who each got stars of the Hollywood Walk of Fame this week. But the reason we’re really talking about them is because they’ve been together for 34 years and still seem happy as hell. Relationship goals right there.

Here’s a pic of them looking cool as fuck.

3) Avocado hand, which translates as slicing into your finger/hand/artery when trying to wrestle out the stone. As a regular consumer of the green stuff, we’ve come pretty close to this a number of times – but so has Meryl Streep, apparently.

4) Getting nekked in front of strangers. After a hot stone massage and a smear test in the space of six days (one was marginally more pleasant than the other) we’ve gotten pretty used to feeling the breeze down there. Ahem.

5) The new First Lady of France, Brigitte Trogneux. While, predictably, it’s the 24-year age gap between her and her much younger husband that has caused a global stir (please see point 1), we’ve fallen for her sartorial style – which is WAY cooler than usual First Lady attire – and distinctly French couldn’t-give-a-fuck attitude.

Embed from Getty ImagesI don’t have a picture of my rock hard abs on a good day, but they’re basically/sort of/exactly like/ if you squint the right way/absolutely nothing like Emily’s.

I’ve been on social media for a few years now and have remained relatively unscathed in terms of any negative reactions to my drunk Facebook posts or cliché food pics on Instagram. But as of late I’ve found myself a victim of a different type of troll, one much closer to home — my gut.

Once firm friends, I look back fondly on happier times. Memories of pizza, of fried food, of pastries as big as my face — #food #nom #cheatday etc. In a second that all changed. A furious wrath that only a troll would know took my insides prisoner and wouldn’t let up until I’d shat myself sideways for three days straight.

So what the hell is going on? I’ve been binging on wheat, gluten, fibre all my life… why now? I’ll hold my hands up and say that until recently, I thought IBS had become a bit of a trend among women who were wishing up reasons for trying diets without admitting that they were trying diets. Savage, I know. Little did I know the joke was on me and I’d soon be hit with week-long episodes of stomach cramping, gas and sometimes even vomit. I didn’t truly know what bloated was until I turned 25. Sure, the skin problems from your teenage years clears up and stretch marks are NBD anymore, but in its place is a brand new stress that is just as consuming.

Let me spell it out for you – THIS BITCH LIKES TO EAT. I like to eat out. I like to eat in. I like to eat after I’ve eaten, when my body is telling me I can’t eat anymore. You can imagine the trauma when I had to start second guessing everything I was putting in my mouth, and the nerves of waiting for the aftermath that sometimes never even came.

Much like a troll, IBS never lets you know when it’s coming, what it wants, or if it’s going to draft in an entire army to defeat you. It is incapable of empathy and it can smell fear. How do we beat the trolls? We address the problem. We share our stories and find strength in numbers. We find Instagram accounts with similar issues, we read up more on what should actually be entering our bodies, we grow.

Have you been a victim of digestive trolling? Come say hey! We can all pine for pastries together.

1) The name of Liam and Cheryl’s baby. The days of official announcements are over, seemingly, and we’ve been left piecing together clues from Twitter. We look back fondly on the days when people just did their OK photoshoot and were done with it.

But it is definitely Bear, yeah?

2) The car crash that was that Diane Abbot interview. Particular note to the rustle of papers as she frantically flicked through her notes trying to get the figures right. Eesh.

3) Werk werk werk werk werk werk. We’re not called Jaded for nothing, and this one hit particular dizzying heights of tiresomeness. Onwards and upward, eh?

4) The Met Gala. Never have we been so eager to get to our phone at 6.45am on a Tuesday, and it was as weird and wonderful as expected. We’re still trying to figure out what was going on with Rita Ora’s hair. Papier machie?

Paramore are back and even though we’re old enough to know better, that means we’re currently existing in shameless, unadulterated peak fangirl mode. So here we’ve collated our personal favourite Hayley hair moments… just because.

First up is the Now era. Which also made us want a micro fringe now-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow. Pros: it looks f**cking cool. Cons: it takes about a year to grow out.

The video for Hard Times landed the other week and we were just as interested in what Hayley’s hair would be doing as we were the music. The grown-out fringe and ice blonde shade did not disappoint.

You can probably count the number of people who can pull off blue hair on one hand, but no surprise, our girl Hayley is one of them. Other personal favourites are Katy Perry and Sophie Hannah Richardson, if anyone is interested.

Basically the hair cut we’ve aspired to have since the age of around 17. A long, chopped-into fringe that hits the magical length of just below the eyebrows but not in the eyes, plus layers. Effortless.

Remember the time Hayley dyed her hair purple? No, neither did we. But this pic proves that she can pull off literally any colour of the rainbow. We love the twisted bun mohawk as well. And the matching eyeshadow.

And we round off the list with the Misery Business era. It was the hair that spawned a thousand YouTube hair tutorials. Everyone wanted it. Everyone had it.